Artists - Part 9

Zefrey Throwell

Zefrey Throwell is a New York performance artist, born in 1975 and raised in Alaska.  Like many performance artists, his performances often involve nudity and exhibitionism.

On St. Patrick's Day, 2009, while millions watched the parade on 5th Avenue, on a terrace high above them, Zefrey photographed two models having sex within view of the windows of neighboring buildings.

He then made posters of a collage of the photos, calling it "The Ecstasy of Saint Patrick," and put them up around the city.  A cop caught him putting up a poster, arrested him, and threw him in jail.  Zefrey said it was art.  The judge threw the case out of court with a laugh.  Zefrey says, "Funny that while the cop claimed it wasn't art, it did happen to be showing at Christie's."

In August, 2011, Zefrey put on a performance art piece called "Ocularpation: Wall Street."  It involved finding people who worked on Wall Street (not stockbrokers, but people who literally worked on the street, such as street cleaners).  He then got 50 models to go and do those jobs on Wall Street while gradually stripping off their clothes until they were naked, like this street sweeper.

Zefrey himself acted as a hot dog vendor.  Three of the 50 participants got arrested.  Months later, the "Occupy Wall Street" movement happened.  They had heard about Zefrey's little stunt, and they used him as a consultant.

In November, 2011, Zefrey staged a performance piece called "I'll Raise You One."  For seven days, from 10:30 am to 6:00 pm, a group of men and women played strip poker in a ground-floor room visible from the outside through large windows.  When each game ended because they were all naked, they all got dressed and started another game.

Zefrey claimed that the piece was about different economic models (capitalism, socialism, etc.), with the players betting their clothing instead of money, but to people outside, it was clearly about seeing the players get naked.  Above, the audience seems like the view.

Here's part of a video that someone filmed from outside.  The poker players were different each day, except that Zefrey played every day.  That's him in the yellow T-shirt on the right.

After that, Zefrey started a relationship with Josephine Decker, another artist who had participated in the strip poker event.  For five years, he captured their relationship on video, filming everything – love, fights, sex – as the relationship ran its course and eventually burned out.

He edited the videos, including the most intimate parts, into a film called Flames that was shown at the 2017 Tribeca film festival.  The photo above is a capture from the film's trailer.  Critics asked: was the relationship real, or was five years of his life a piece of performance art?